The People With Power at Facebook as Its Hardware, Commerce Ambitions Expand

Facebook in recent years has laid out an aggressive strategy of building its own consumer hardware to lessen its dependence on Apple and Google, makers of the two dominant mobile operating systems. The seriousness of its ambitions is reflected in its headcount: Nearly 10,000 people are working in its group developing augmented and virtual reality devices, or nearly one-fifth of Facebook’s total global workforce, according to internal organizational data reviewed by The Information.

Meanwhile, one of Facebook’s other large employee groups, engineering, recently promoted David Mortenson as its new leader. He replaces Jay Parikh, who left last month after spending over a decade building the social network’s data centers and technology infrastructure. And in another previously unreported move, Facebook last summer hired a former YouTube and Spotify executive, Shiva Rajaraman, to lead its budding commerce efforts—a key growth area for the company as it seeks to become more of a shopping destination. These changes, along with updates to the leadership of Facebook’s apps and the formation of its new payments group, are reflected in our updated org chart showing over 130 of the most senior executives at the company.